What you missed at QuakeCon

Posted by Victor Godinez

11:24 AM, August 4, 2008

Okay, I've been sort of the invisible man around here for a few weeks (iPhone launch, vacation, stomach virus), but I do return bearing gifts, or blog posts, anyway.

First up, QuakeCon!

One of the DMN's interns, Ian Hamilton, went out write a story on all the QuakeCon tournament and expo shenanigans, and you can read it here, and see a video of the event shot by one of our photo staff.

Second, I had a chance to do a one-on-one interview with id Software head honcho John Carmack, and he talked about why he's so excited about developing games for the iPhone (he says it's basically as powerful as a PS2 or Xbox), id's growth as a company (get your resumes in now), and his side project: building spaceships.

By the way, I didn't have space to address this in my article, but you may have read some of the headlines that Carmack said during his QuakeCon keynote speech that the Xbox 360 version of id's upcoming title Rage will look worse than the PS3 version.

I asked Carmack about this, and here's what he said:

According to Carmack, the XBox 360 is in nearly every way a better, more developer-friendly console than the PS3 except for the PS3's high-capacity Blu-ray drive.

The Xbox 360 is, as everyone knows, stuck with a standard DVD drive.

Now, Rage on the 360 will ship on two DVDs, but, to match all the data being poured onto the PS3's capacious Blu-ray discs, the 360 version would have to ship on three DVD discs.

That's technically feasible, and id doesn't think the in-game disc-swapping would be all that onerous, but apparently Microsoft charges a licensing fee for each disc included in the case, rather than just charging a single licensing fee for the entire game.

So the cost of going to three discs would just be too expensive for id under the current licensing structure, and so the 360 version will not have all the graphical tidbits that the PS3 version of Rage will have.

Now, Microsoft could solve this problem by altering the licensing program, charging just per game rather than per disc, but id doesn't expect that to happen. Or, if it does happen, it probably won't happen in time for Rage's release.

Talk about a penny-wise, pound-foolish approach by Microsoft (do they really want to give Sony and the PS3 fanboys this kind of ammunition?), but that's the situation.

Incidentally, id is famous for never offering release dates for its games until they go gold, but the fact that Carmack doesn't think Microsoft will change its policy in time for Rage's release suggests to me that the game is no more than a year away from release, and perhaps even sooner than that.